Insons populi, barbitog,

devius

THE

LIFE OF MILTON.

Quem tu, Dea, tempore in omni
Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus. Lucr.

THE author of the "Defence of the People of England" and of the " Paradise Lost" has engaged too much of the attention of the world not to invite its curiosity to the cir cumstances of his conduct and the peculiarities of his mind. His biographers have been numerous; and every source of information respecting him has been explored with a degree of solicitous minuteness, which bears honourable testimony to the impression of his importance. Unfortunately however, the character which the great Milton sustained, on the political theatre of his calamitous times, has exposed him to the malignity of party; and this undying and sleepless pest has been

"Nec dulci declinat lumina somno."

Party resembles the "Fama malum," the allegorical monster of Virgil, in more than this particular of sleeplessness; for it is

ever watchful to diminish the pride of his triumph, and to obscure that glory which it could not extinguish.

During the immediate agitation of the political conflict, while interest is directly affected, passion will necessarily be excited ; and the weapons of passion are seldom delicately fashioned or scrupulously employed. When the good or the great therefore are exposed to falsehood by contemporary malignity, and are held up, with questioned virtues and imputed vices, to the execration instead of the applause of their species, we acknowledge the cause of the fact in the corruption of man, and it forms the subject of our regret rather than of our surprise. But when, after a lapse of years sufficient to obliterate the very deepest trace of tempoFor interest, we observe the activity of passtagnating into the sullenness of ranCo; and see these heroes of our race subjd to the same injuriousness of malice which they had suffered from their personal adversaries, we stare at the consequence of unexpected depravity, and are astonished in as great a degree as we are afflicted.

also" ficti pravique tenax,"-tenacious of falsehood and wrong; "et magnas territat urbes," and it alarms and agitates great cities, breaking the repose and concord of large communities of men.

This remark is immediately to our present purpose: for this generation has witnessed an attempt on the character of our great writer, which would have done credit to the virulence of his own age. We have seen a new Salmasius, unimpelled by those motives which actuated the hireling of Charles, revive in Johnson; and have beheld the virtuous and the amiable, the firm and the consistent Milton, who appears to have acted, from the opening to the close of his life

"As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye,"

exhibited in the disguise of a morose and a malevolent being;—of a man, impatient himself of the social subordination, yet oppressive to those within his power; of a wretch who, from pride austerity and prudence, was at once a rebel, a tyrant, and a sycophant. This atrocious libel has long since reflected discredit on its author alone; and its falsehood has been so clearly demonstrated by many able pens, and particularly by those of Blackburne and of Hayley, that a new biographer

Francis Blackburne, Archdeacon of Cleveland, author of the Confessional. He published, without his name, in 1780, some very able and acute remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton; and they have very properly been republished in the "Memoirs of Thomas Hollis," of which the Archdeacon was the compiler.